A recommendation to Gov. Rick Scott and his Cabinet was expected to be made at an Aug. 19 meeting. However, the agenda for that meeting does not have the nursing home issue on it.

The county’s proposed site in Tradition had been top ranked by a Department of Veterans Affairs site election review committee. That site was followed by a location in Marion County that includes Ocala. Collier County came in third out of the six counties competing for the project.

“We are confident that once the Cabinet has the opportunity to review all the applications and sites that they will agree with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Site Selection Committee in selecting St. Lucie County’s site as the number one choice,” Hutchinson said in a statement.

At the same time, Hutchinson continued appealing for Treasure Coast residents to lobby state officials to built the $36.1 million nursing home in St. Lucie County. The state has provided about $11 million that would be matched with federal dollars to construct at least one new veterans nursing home in Florida.

Construction is to begin in 2015.

St. Lucie County’s 28.5-acre site in Tradition was ranked the No. 1 site for the proposed 100,000-square-foot, 120-bed veterans’ nursing home. The Florida Department of Veterans Affairs Selection Committee made the ranking after a June 18 visit to the site: an empty field west of Tradition Town Square.

The Tradition site is near Tradition Medical Center, Fire Station 17, nursing schools, retail and hotel accommodations and is close to Interstate 95. The site was donated to St. Lucie County by the Tradition Land Co. and is zoned for nursing home that state officials say could employ 190 people.

The 75-mile service area for the Treasure Coast currently has an estimated 279,971 veterans, of which 145,242 are more than 65 years old. The closest existing state veterans homes are more than 200 miles away in all directions.

“We look forward to this process moving along so that we can begin construction on a new state of the art facility for our veterans, so that they may get the quality health care that the so rightly deserve,” Hutchinson said in a statement.

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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